Habib Abi Shahla Is Dead

A name the Lebanese recall with great respect and reverence whenever they recall Lebanon in the stages of its development and liberation, and its forward drive among the nations, cutting its way toward sovereignty and glory.

And who is there who remembers Habib Abi Shahla, and does not see the man's life rise before him as a radiant book, written by the Beloved with his own self-made effort, every letter of it traced in his heart's blood, embroidered with his genius — a book in which he gathered the most precious of what abides among men upon the earth, and whose good endures.

Habib Abi Shahla was a brilliant advocate and a politician without peer; but his fame, which found for itself wide horizons, did not rest upon all of that: it was nourished by a rare humanity that overspread the Beloved's life, and decreed that his name should defy extinction and his works be joined to the sweetest of memories.

Habib Abi Shahla was a national leader of great weight; rarely will you find, among the leaders of the Lebanese renaissance, one who enjoyed such a winning personality as earned him the title of "the Beloved" in his homeland; nor will the student of psychology find a personality like Habib's — singular in its strange contradictions and its far-reaching possibilities, hiding within its folds the secret of the man's greatness, as the oyster hides its pearls.

For he was the man who challenged with love, who was open with awareness and vigilance, strong with nobility and humility, frank with dignity and tact; the sober scholar, the devoted statesman, the leader who believed in liberty — and did not beg for it in defeat, nor court it in servility, nor keep, alongside the mob, an account in its name; he defended it in his homeland as he defended it for the peoples overpowered in their own affairs.

This is Habib Abi Shahla! Doctor of laws, deputy, minister, head of state, and president of the Chamber of Deputies. In him Lebanon has lost a man of rare gifts, who leaves a great emptiness in a country that will go on missing him whenever men recall the man's exploits in the fields of patriotism, intelligence, and genius.